Sailor

You sailed on a seagoing vessel for years. In that time, you faced down mighty storms, monsters of the deep, and those who wanted to sink your craft to the bottomless depths. Your first love is the distant line of the horizon, but the time has come to try your hand at something new.

Discuss the nature of the ship you previously sailed with your GM. Was it a merchant ship, a naval vessel, a ship of discovery, or a pirate ship? How famous (or infamous) is it? Is it widely traveled? Is it still sailing, or is it missing and presumed lost with all hands?

What were your duties on board? Boatswain, captain, navigator, cook, or some other position? Who were the captain and first mate? Did you leave your ship on good terms with your fellows, or on the run?

Attribute Score Increase

Increase one mental attribute of your choice by 1 and add +1 to your Awareness.

Connections

Your first captain: a cheerful merchant shipmaster and opportunistic pirate.
The cruel naval captain who flogged you out of the service.
The scoundrelly shipmate who ran off with the other half of your treasure map.
The naval captain who won’t rest until you are caught.
The mutineers who left you on a deserted island.
The fisherman with whom you tried to reel in the King of the Sea.
A friendly shipmate who is eager to tell everyone the tale of how you saved their life.
Your former shipmate, a bent and aged mariner with an eerie gift for foretelling bad weather and other calamities.
Your retired mentor who first taught you the difference between a mainbrace and a marlinspike.
The pirate who sunk your ship, leaving you the sole survivor.

Equipment

A belaying pin (club), 50 feet of silk rope, a lucky charm such as a rabbit foot or a small stone with a hole in the center (or you may roll for a random trinket on the Trinkets table), a set of common clothes and a pouch containing 10 gp.

Mementos

A dagger with a handle carved from a dragon turtle’s tooth.
A scroll tube filled with nautical charts.
A harpoon (treat as a javelin with its butt end fastened to a rope).
A scar with a famous tale behind it.
A treasure map.
A codebook which lets you decipher a certain faction’s signal flags.
A necklace bearing a scale, shell, tooth, or other nautical trinket.
Several bottles of alcohol.
A tale of an eerie encounter with a strange monster, a ghost ship, or other mystery.
A half-finished manuscript outlining an untested theory about how to rerig a ship to maximize speed.

Feature: Ship’s Passage

When you need to, you can secure free passage on a sailing ship for yourself and your adventuring companions. You might sail on the ship you served on, or another ship you have good relations with (perhaps one captained by a former crewmate). Because you’re calling in a favor, you can’t be certain of a schedule or route that will meet your every need. Your GM will determine how long it takes to get where you need to go. In return for your free passage, you and your companions are expected to assist the crew during the voyage.

Variant Feature: Bad Reputation

If your character has a sailor background, you may select this background feature instead of Ship’s Passage.

No matter where you go, people are afraid of you due to your reputation. When you are in a civilised settlement, you can get away with minor criminal offenses, such as refusing to pay for food at a tavern or breaking down doors at a local shop, since most people will not report your activity to the authorities.

Variant Sailor: Pirate

You spent your youth under the sway of a dread pirate, a ruthless cutthroat who taught you how to survive in a world of sharks and savages. You’ve indulged in larceny on the high seas and sent more than one deserving soul to a briny grave. Fear and bloodshed are no strangers to you, and you’ve garnered a somewhat unsavoury reputation in many a port town.

If you decide that your sailing career involved piracy, you can choose the Bad Reputation feature (see sidebar) instead of the Ship’s Passage feature.